A good start can make a race. MSc student Lindsay Musalem analyzes the forces elite runners produce as they burst out of the starting blocks. Her findings could help give Canadian athletes a leg up in future competitions.

Dr. Tom Chau and researchers in the Bloorview Research Institute at Holland Bloorview Kids Rehabilitation Hospital have designed a suite of technologies to break down communication barriers for children and youth with severe and complex disabilities.

Early treatment can make all the difference for a child with autism. Often, however, diagnosis comes too late for effective treatment. Now, a breakthrough by U of T’s Professor Stephen Scherer makes early diagnosis and treatment possible.

Science traditionally divides child development among numerous disciplines, leaving a fractured view of how children develop physically and psychologically. The Fraser Mustard Institute for Human Development is pursuing a cohesive, transdisciplinary understanding of how the first 2,000 days of life shape our health and wellbeing.

Professor Ron Deibert, Director of the Citizen Lab at the Munk School of Global Affairs, is exposing cyber espionage, information warfare and Internet censorship to help protect the rights of citizens worldwide.

Climate change threatens to drastically affect plant, animal, and human life in Canada’s north. Professor Kent Moore’s research on the Beaufort Sea’s Arctic marine ecosystem will help reveal how things will change.

As Canada’s fastest growing city, Mississauga requires more physicians to ensure access to health care for all members of the community. Thanks to visionary philanthropists Terrence Donnelly and Carlo Fidani and other key partners, the Mississauga Academy of Medicine is meeting this critical need by training the next generation of health leaders in Ontario.

To remain competitive, Canada needs highly specialized leaders trained in specific sectors as well as in management and business. The new Institute for Management and Innovation at the University of Toronto Mississauga is developing this specialized talent.

The digital economy is critical to Canada’s future growth and prosperity. However, without a plan to exploit the tremendous opportunities of advanced information technology, we risk being left behind. A new project led by Professor David Wolfe aims to put Canada on track.

The Hult Prize helps launch entrepreneurial solutions to the world’s most pernicious social problems. U of T’s Team Attollo made the finals with a plan to teach young children in urban slums the vocabulary they need for a better life.

Playing a musical instrument with rhythm and style requires mastering subtle bodily movements. U of T neuroscientist Berhard Ross is investigating how playing music helps patients recover the use of their limbs in the aftermath of a stroke.

Professor Prabhat Jha leads the Million Death Study, the largest epidemiological research study in global health. By following the lives and deaths of two million households throughout India, Jha is finding new ways to reduce premature mortality worldwide.

Debates about public transit are empty without empirical evidence. By researching urban redevelopment, Professor André Sorensen and his students at the Cities Lab at UTSC are informing the discussion of transit options for Scarborough, the Greater Toronto Area and cities across North America.

U of T Professor Geoffrey Hinton’s “deep learning’’ neural networks have made him one of the world’s most celebrated artificial intelligence researchers. His algorithms already power technology like voice recognition and image search and may soon understand the meanings of sentences.

Professor Frank Rudzicz and his team are developing computer software to diagnose neurodegenerative disease rapidly and accurately. The program analyzes an individual’s speech and compares it to known patterns that reveal the presence or absence of dementia as well as diseases such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s.

As the world of online education grows, so do questions about its effectiveness. By bringing technological innovations to large and online courses, Professor Steve Joordens is demonstrating that students can get a deep and engaging learning experience remotely, online or in the biggest classrooms.

Today, cross-cultural skills and a global outlook are critical for students to succeed in global development and international business. Two flagship programs at the University of Toronto Scarborough meet that need by empowering students with experience abroad.

Follow the money and you’ll find the root of the matter. UTSC political scientist Aisha Ahmad is doing just that by exploring how local business elites are financing ideologically motivated Islamist groups in the ongoing civil wars in North Africa, the Middle East and South Asia.

U of T’s Technologies for Aging Gracefully Lab (TAGLab) focuses on creating technology that can help people to adapt to the aging process and continue to live healthy, happy, productive lives in their own homes.

Professor Pamela Klassen investigates how nations are not only politically imagined, but also spiritually invented. Focused on interactions between Christian missionaries and Indigenous peoples in early 20th-century Canada, her research also considers what remembering this history means for efforts of reconciliation in the present.

Over the past two decades, we have seen growing irrationality in politics, influencing policy decisions and our quality of life. Professor Joseph Heath is sparking a public conversation about what rationality is and how to restore its place in public discourse.

Ubiquitous computing enabled by massive data centres already influences our daily lives in ways we take for granted. But these systems sometimes fail with serious consequences. Professor Bianca Schroeder is exploring how to make these data centres more reliable and efficient.

CRANE Project Director and U of T archaeologist Professor Timothy Harrison leads an international, multi-disciplinary team of researchers in a groundbreaking effort to digitize, visualize, and simulate the birthplace of human civilization.

U of T researchers at the new Ted Rogers Centre for Heart Research are exploring the extraordinary promise of stem cell therapies and tissue engineering to offer new hope to millions who suffer from heart disease.

U of T engineers have designed and tested a new approach to cloaking objects so that they are not visible or detectable. The research holds great promise for advances in military, surveillance and cell phone transmission.

Professor Zindel Segal has shown that mindfulness meditation can change how the brain functions and help patients struggling with depression. As his method gains international recognition, Segal aims to make it affordable and available to anyone by delivering therapy online.

Protecting the rights of all Canadians is a vital task if we are to maintain a free society. U of T’s David Asper Centre for Constitutional Rights ensures that the higher courts uphold the Charter of Rights and Freedoms.

We can already collect voluminous data about the functions and structure of a patient’s brain. Professor Randy McIntosh is developing a platform to create virtual models of human brains that integrate the data to help physicians treat brain diseases.